Dear Amritsar,
Our 15 year-old son Timmy is a little green around the edges and doesn't pick up his feet when he walks, but, despite being a zombie, is a good kid who gets decent grades at school and relates well to his siblings, who do not share his...affliction. I am, however, a little worried about his diet.
Whenever I try to encourage him to eat more vegetables, he just stares at me and moans, "Braaaaaains!" I've begged him to eat high fibre cereals for breakfast, but he just stares at me and moans, "Braaaaaains!" I don't know how many times I have asked him to take vitamin supplements to make up for the nutrients he is missing, but he just stares at me and moans, "Braaaaaains!"
Should I worry about Timmy's...unusual diet? And, if so, is there anything I can do to change it?
June Cleaver
Hey, Babe,
The teen years are difficult enough for most children, but they are especially hard on zombies.
Vampires are the cool kids in the schoolyard. Werewolves are the jocks. Ghosts are the artsy types. Recombined and reanimated children are the class clowns (albeit, not always intentionally). Zombies? Well, let's be honest, zombies are the chess nerds of the supernatural high school set, the one clique that all the others look down upon.
You are right to be concerned about Timmy's diet. Without the proper vitamins, his bones will become brittle and his limbs will become prone to breaking off...well, more prone to breaking off than they already are. I do not want to alarm you, but that's the least of his problems: without a proper balance of fruit and meat, your son's brain will shrivel and become increasingly dysfunctional, which will likely make it difficult for him to get into a good college (unless he was planning on going into law).
Some experts in the field of Neo-Thanatical Nutrition Studies have suggested that this is just a phase your son is going through, and that he will probably outgrow it if he doesn't get shot in the head before his 20th birthday. However, most research indicates that, if not short-circuited early, the hunger for braaaaaains among undead children will follow them for the rest of their lives.
Trying to reason with your child will likely prove futile, for obvious reasons. You might want to consider cognitive therapy to counter Timmy's obsessive eating behaviours. Unfortunately, tests conducted at the New England School of Zombie Apocalypse Medicine indicate that four out of five researchers are murdered within minutes of beginning clinical trials, while the fifth researcher ends up in a desolate building in the woods with a disparate band of strangers fighting for their survival. At best, I would consider these tests to be inconclusive.
Some parents resort to trickery to get their zombie children to eat a healthier diet. You could, for instance, try to cook high fibre muffins using molds in the shape of braaaaaains (which can be conveniently purchased for 99 cents at the Dollar Store, if not stolen from a neighbour who appears to have vanished). Some parents have taken to mashing vitamins into a fine powder and mixing them into their zombie children's breakfast braaaaaains, which, while disgusting, does tend to go unnoticed by the child.
While subterfuges like these may seem like an acceptable short term solution, they don't address the main problem: your child's insistence on eating unhealthily. Your reluctance to confront your child when it is trying to get its hands around your throat so that it can chomp on your head (the ellipses in your question may have given away more of your fears than you realize) is understandable, but you have to put aside your personal insecurities and do what is best for little Timmy.
Nobody said being a parent was easy. Especially during a zombie apocalypse.
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: even though emotions on the subject of the depiction of women in computer games runs high, there is no excuse for tweeting something like: "evil femiNazi hos should suk my dik & die!" You should, instead, write: "I would appreciate it if evil femiNazi prostitutes would suck my dick and die!" High emotions are no excuse for poor spelling or general incivility!